Final Thoughts on the Arizona Fall League

I am going to do a larger review of this for the newsletter, but that will take a bit of time and may not be done until early next week. For today, I want to remind of you what I wrote about the AFL back in October..
My advice about the Arizona Fall League: treat it like a form of spring training. It's good if a guy does well there, but it is just one data point, and can't be taken too seriously. After the Ken Harvey Experience, I won't promote a guy to top prospect status just because of strong AFL performance.

With that in mind, a few short bullet-point observations.

*27 different players hit .300 or higher in the AFL this year.
*22 players slugged .500 or higher.
*The top three in slugging were Yankees prospect Eric Duncan (.734), Angels prospect Brandon Wood (.711), and Diamondbacks prospect Stephen Drew (.708). Duncan's performance was nice to see after he had a disappointing '05 campaign in Double-A.
*14 players had OBP of .400 or higher. The leader was Oakland prospect Andre Ethier at .495. Ethier also posted a 21/10 BB/K ratio in 82 at-bats. The question for him is power. He slugged .598 but hit just two homers.
*Daric Barton hit just .267. He had a .429 OBP but his SLG was disappointing at .400.
*Baltimore lefty Adam Loewen led the circuit with a 1.67 ERA.
*Only 7 inning-qualifying pitchers had ERAs less than 4.00.
*Twins prospect Glen Perkins posted a sound 39/6 K/BB in 32 innings, and reportedly looked much better than he did in the second half of the year in Double-A.
*Angels prospect Jered Weaver posted an ugly 5.47 ERA, but a pleasant 35/5 K/BB in 25 innings.
*Yankees relief prospect T.J. Beam posted a 20/2 K/BB in 18 innings. He is a sleeper prospect; keep an eye on him in 2006.

A more detailed report with team-by-team observations will go out to newsletter subscribers when it is finished.